


Solitude in Requiem

by sleepypercy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hell, Psychics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-12
Updated: 2013-08-12
Packaged: 2017-12-23 05:44:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/922676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepypercy/pseuds/sleepypercy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after Dean’s been dragged to Hell and Sam’s not quite keeping it together. When Sam finds a psychic to contact Dean in Hell, he's not prepared for the version of Dean that he pulls up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solitude in Requiem

**Author's Note:**

> Much love to [cosmonaught](http://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmonaught/pseuds/cosmonaught) for the beta.
> 
> This is my first fully Gen fic. I'm pretty nervous, actually.

Sam’s forehead is sticky with sweat as he flops back on the bed, nuzzling the bedspread with his temples to remove the itch of salt water on his hairline and leaving damp, yellowing stains on the cheap motel blanket. His body is flushed and hot, the sloshing warmth of beer spreading in his belly as holds the bottle upright on the bedspread, blearily staring at the veins wrapping around his forearm like twisting vines.

A passing curiosity has him wondering just how much alcohol he’d have to drink to turn his blood flammable, and he chuckles at the thought before doing some quick, mental calculations (which take a few extra minutes to sort out since he _is_ drunk) and figures that his blood alcohol content would have to be at least fifty times the lethal percentage to be able to light his veins on fire. He briefly wonders what percentage he’s at right now but ultimately decides he doesn’t give a flying fuck as he takes another swig. Whatever percentage he’s at, it’s still not high enough.

While he’s in the midst of imagining what it would feel like to have fire literally running through his bloodstream, he gets a sudden, jolting imagine of some demon doing that very thing to his brother; strapping Dean on a rack and injecting lighter fluid straight into his veins, then scratching a matchstick across Dean’s teeth, slashing him across the chest, and dropping the flame on the bloody gash so the demon can watch Dean burn from the inside out.

Sam can feel the rise of bile and alcohol and whatever bits of food are in his stomach as it all threatens to come up, and he swallows back hard, trying to force everything to stay down and play nice. His chest expands in few slow, steady breaths, his eyes closing until the urge to vomit finally passes and he’s back in the safe zone.

He never truly forgets about his brother being in Hell, but he’s tried his damnedest to shove that knowledge down, refusing to _deal_ , refusing to fucking _grieve_ because there’s no way Dean’s staying there, not while Sam’s still living and breathing.

The amulet around Sam’s neck suddenly feels suffocating; the brass of the horned figure a searing heat in the hollow of his throat, inexplicably hotter than Sam’s flushed skin, and he almost reaches over to rip the thing off and throw it across the room. It’s Dean’s, and Sam doesn’t really want to be wearing it; isn’t even sure why he took it off his brother’s corpse in the first place.

At the time, he’d been staring at his brother’s casket, ready to lower it into the ground, when some panic in his gut made him pry the lid open one last time despite the thick wave of nausea that immediately hit his stomach at the sight of Dean’s mauled, shredded body. Seeing it reminded Sam all over again of having to pull his dead brother into his arms and carry him to the car; his body still dripping warm blood that soaked into Sam’s chest and arms and smeared all over the upholstery. For a brief minute, Sam had considered pulling off his shirt or rooting through the trunk for a towel and trying to staunch the blood dripping onto the seat and car floor, knowing how pissed Dean would be at the stains on his baby, but then those hysterical thoughts transmuted into blinding anger, and his jaw tightened as he glared at his brother’s corpse, suddenly furious all over again at Dean for making that stupid fucking deal with the crossroads demon and leaving Sam behind to watch him die. The entire drive to Bobby’s had been one giant blur, and Sam’s still not sure how he managed to get to South Dakota without wrapping the Impala around a tree.

The amulet was resting neatly on top of Dean’s shirt—Bobby had done his best to make Dean look presentable for his funeral; cleaned up the blood and found a fresh set of clothes because Sam refused to touch that cold, dead thing that used to be his brother, not after he’d dumped it on Bobby’s couch—and as the metal glinted in the chilly, morning sun, Sam reached down to touch it; found it incongruously warm; the heat sinking past the whorls on his fingertips. Before he even thought it through, he’d taken the necklace off his brother and placed it around his own neck, and as the weight settled around his throat, he could feel the unspoken promise that came with it: he would carry this until Dean came back to claim it.

His brother hadn’t owned much, but everything Dean had possessed is so unmistakably _his_ that Sam has a hard time looking at anything without getting a flash of memory—Dean cleaning his favorite weapons, Dean pulling out his medical kit to stitch up some deep cut, Dean carefully putting his lock-picking kit back in order. The car _should_ have been the easiest thing for Sam to have around—after all, he grew up in it, same as Dean—but it ended up being the worst of them all because Dean’s presence in it was damn near tangible. And it might be just in his head, but Sam swears he can feel the resentment vibrating from the car every time he took the wheel because he wasn’t _Dean_ and he didn’t get to call her _baby_ and lovingly run his hands along the smooth, shiny frame or apologize when he was gone for too long or dedicate rock ballads to her or obsess over the perfection that is a ’67 Chevy Impala.

For the first month he tried to appease Dean’s baby by faithfully shoving in the same cassette tapes that he used to bitch about; blasting Def Leppard and Metallica and ZZ Top and everything else that used to rattle his teeth and make the pulse points behind his ears throb after hours—days— _years_ of the same music over and over again. Eventually, though, he had to admit that no matter how many mullet-era rock hits he blared through the Chevy’s speakers, the car wasn’t gonna warm up to him any more than it already did, and he wasn’t going to miss Dean any less. So he stopped trying; bought an iPod jack.

It felt more honest, and he and the Impala came to some sort of understanding.

He was only a few months into trying to live without Dean when he attempted to make a deal with the crossroads demon because he couldn’t deal with the guilt of being left behind and the empty space in the motel room that filled his ears with loud, white noise every time he looked at it. Anyway, it wasn’t like the world needed Sam Winchester—not like it needed Dean. Sam was sloppy, headstrong, selfish; he’d rather live a safe, quiet life as far from hunting as possible while Dean… Dean seemed to feel responsible for the safety of the entire world, shouldering that burden like he was the only hunter out there.

Sam knew his brother would hate him for it, but a world without Dean seemed so much emptier than a world without Sam.

The deal inevitably went bad— _sour_ like the taste of alcohol mixed with stomach acid when it rushed back up his throat only a few minutes later—and Sam felt the rage building in his chest as the crossroads demon smugly informed him that Hell didn’t want Sam’s soul; they already had Dean right where they wanted him.

The last few pulses of the crossroad demon’s heart beat wet and hard against the knife Sam shoved into its chest, and as the pounding slowed then stopped, Sam waited for the comforting thrill of satisfaction he expected to feel for this small act of revenge. But no matter how tightly he corkscrewed that blade in the black-eyed bastard’s ribs, it felt nothing like the last time he’d done this, when he’d shot that crossroads bitch between the eyes because he’d hated her fucking smile and her fucking voice, and he wanted to see that perfect, surprised ‘O’ on the lips of the same demon that had greedily stolen Dean’s soul away with nothing more than a kiss slicked by a lipstick shade called _Hellfire_.

The door handle to the Impala was slippery when Sam finally managed to stumble his way over to the car, and he muttered dark curses as he fumbled in the dark, unable to understand what was all over the latch until he slapped the side of the window in frustration, leaving behind a dark, wet handprint. It took a few blurry minutes of squinting before the cogs finally started turning again and he realized that his hands were covered in demon blood.

After wiping his hands off on his pants, Sam pried the door open and threw himself into the backseat, intending to sleep off the worst of his binge until he turned sober enough to drive himself out of there. But he couldn’t sleep—the backs of his eyelids were filled with images of fire and white eyes and hellhounds, and after a few minutes of uncomfortable thrashing, Sam gave up trying; sat back up and started prying at the fabric covering the rear deck until it pulled off completely and he could trace the _SW_ and _DW_ that he and Dean had carved into the space so long ago.

As Sam’s fingers brushed over both sets of initials, he recalled Dean’s young, excited grin when he’d hauled Sam inside the car, handed him a blade, and told him they were gonna make sure the car was theirs forever. Sam’s younger self has been exhilarated at getting to put his initials right next to his older brother’s, and when they’d finished, Dean had grinned and placed an impulsive kiss over his mark. Not wanting to be left out, Sam copied the action, smacking his lips down wetly on the dusty wood, and Dean declared that the car would always know who loved her best, no matter what. She belonged to them for always.

Sam didn’t even realize he was crying until he heard the soft patter of tears hitting upholstery, and as the backseat molded around his curled-up body, he knew that the Impala had finally forgiven him for not being Dean.

He fell asleep just like that, with one hand still touching the clumsy grooves of the ‘D’, his body twisted awkwardly into the seat and his legs cramped and shoved against the door, but somehow, the nightmares graciously stayed away until morning, and even with the kinks in his back and the cramps in his legs, it was best sleep Sam had gotten since his brother had been dragged down into the pit.

*&*

Sam’s best ideas come when he’s so sopping drunk that it’s leaking out of his pores, and his latest one is no exception. As he stares at the ceiling, obstinately refusing to be the least bit sorry about ganking that crossroads demon, a thought punches through the thick haze of alcohol, right into the center of his brain, and it’s almost strong enough to jolt him sober.

Missouri.

She can find Dean. Contact him. Isn’t that what psychics do, commune with the dead? And if he can talk to Dean—just for a minute—he’s sure that he can get enough information to get his brother back.

When he’s sober enough that the numbers on his cell phone no longer read as hieroglyphics, he calls her. Of course she won’t even consider it. _What’s dead should stay dead_ , Missouri tells him seriously. _No respectable psychic would ever consider delving into Hell, and if you know what’s good for you, Sam Winchester, you’ll leave Hell alone._

 _Well, he_ doesn’t _know what’s good for him_ , Sam stubbornly thinks but knows better than to say. _That’s why he needs Dean._

It’s not until Ruby finds him and cleans him up that he’s able to revisit his idea to contact Dean in Hell. And since Missouri had been pretty firm on what respectable psychics were willing to do, he decides to take a more underground route to get what he wants. Ruby finds him a psychic by the name of Ronan; an unwashed man with shaking hands and unfocused eyes who’s more than happy to reach out to Hell, although not without an exorbitant price. Sam ignores the warning in his gut that tells him this man is more witch than psychic; that Sam should probably be hunting him down instead of bargaining with him.

Lately, Sam’s gotten really good at shutting his eyes to things he doesn’t want to see.

Ronan’s cheerfulness should make Sam suspicious, but all Sam can think—as he places the stack of bills into the man’s black-tipped fingers—is that no matter what kind of evil bottom feeder may hitch a ride onto their fishing line into Hell, it’ll be worth it so long as he can get his brother back.

He doesn’t let Ruby come along, however, no matter how much that upsets her. Because if he _does_ manage to contact Dean, he doesn’t want to piss his brother off with the demon’s presence; not when he won’t have enough time to explain and not when Ruby’s gleeful face was the last thing Dean saw before the hellhounds tore him up.

The psychic gets right to work; produces ingredients that Sam doesn’t dare ask about and grinds them into powder and dust then mixes them with blood. The smell makes Sam’s stomach somersault in dizzy Cirque-du-Soleil spins. Ronan needs something of Dean’s—as Sam knew he would—and although he hesitates to hand Dean’s amulet over to Ronan and his filthy, waiting palm, it has to be done. So Sam closes his eyes (and ears and mind) and hands it over, and the spell is complete.

They sit at a table while Ronan chants in Latin, and Sam can feel the electric pulse of power when the psychic taps into a direct line to Hell. The smell of sulfur is thick and it coats Sam’s throat and nose like coal dust, making him cough and hack into his arm like he’s got black lung until the smell eventually mutes to something barely-tolerable.

As Ronan navigates through Hell in his astral body, he keeps up a steady play-by-play for Sam of what he’s seeing, walking through fields of fire and dark, twisting hallways until eventually the psychic finds himself in a cement-lined room; walls splattered in blood and guts and bile.

“There’s someone waiting,” Ronan announces, voice cautious. His intonation changes, and his dirt-stained hands reach out. “ _Hey! Are you Dean?”_

There’s a pause and then a forceful, “ _Come with me_.” Another pause, this time longer, and then, under his breath, the psychic mutters, “I don’t think he understands.” Again, he orders: “ _Come with me, Dean. There’s someone who wants to see you_.

Suddenly Ronan’s head drops on the table, hard smack of bone against wood, and when he comes up there’s a trickle of blood running down from a star-break crack on his forehead while his mouth gapes open and his hands try to cling to the table. When his body starts convulsing, Sam jumps up, grabbing the psychic by the shoulders and wondering if he needs to put something between the man’s rattling teeth before he swallows his tongue. Thankfully, his body stops twitching after a few seconds, goes limp with his chin touching his chest as blood trickles past his nose and leaves red droplets on his chest.

He’s still breathing, which Sam takes as a good sign, and when the man finally lifts his head, the movement is slow and predatory as he gives Sam a measured, contemplative glance-over while his eyes glaze black. Something heavy drops in Sam’s stomach as he realizes that the worst-case scenario is being played out; that whatever they’ve managed to pull up from Hell isn’t Dean, but some Hell-demon, although he’s not sure what kind since the liquid-black pool of its eyes is more transparent than he’s ever seen; just barely casting a shadow over the bright blue eyes of what used to be Ronan.

“ _Sammy_ ,” the demon says with a wicked smile, draws the name out with that strange mix of hiss/purr every demon seems to innately mimic. “You’re the fourth one they’ve brought me this week. They still expecting to get some kinda rise outta me? ‘Cause that was burned out ages ago.”

“Who are you!?” Sam demands, pissed off that this thing knows his name and hoping that they haven’t pulled up one of Sam and Dean’s old demon buddies. “Where’s my brother?”

“Are we playing _that_ game again?” the demon asks in amusement as he gracefully rises to his feet. “You gonna be innocent, wide-eyed Sammy today? Gonna try and _save_ me, maybe get all teary-eyed? ‘Cause I can save us both the trouble and just cut those tear-ducts right out.”

Cursing himself for not thinking ahead, Sam backs up, trying to subtly look around him for something he can use against this demon—preferably something to restrain it with. He doesn’t want to send this thing back to Hell just yet, this is the closest he’s ever gotten to Dean and this demon just might have some clue as to how to find and burn his brother’s contract, but Sam can’t interrogate it without some kind of upper hand.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the flask of holy water sitting on the edge of the table, and Sam moves as close as he dares without giving away his intentions. The demon is still watching him, dark eyes amused like he can read Sam’s thoughts, and he waits until the demon starts to give him an assessing look—like he’s trying to decide the best major artery to bleed him out from—before Sam makes a desperate lunge towards the holy water.

But the demon moves quick, like he’d anticipated Sam’s defensive move, like he already knew what Sam would do, and as Sam tightens his fingers over the flask, the demon brings up the large, heavy dish in his hand—still full of bone powder and blood—and before Sam can even register the sharp pain in the back of his skull, everything goes black.

*&*

Sam comes to consciousness groggily, and as he attempts to move and ease the ache in his shoulders and muscles, he quickly realizes that he’s sitting in a chair with his hands and feet securely tied. The Ronan-shaped demon looks pleased when Sam opens his eyes, and he grins at Sam from across the room.

“S’about time,” he chides. “I was gettin’ bored. Cuttin’ into you’s the only thing I have to pass the time around here, although it’s nice to get a change of venue once in a while. Of course, it’s always dirty hole-in-the-wall squats and condemned warehouses. Would it be too much to ask for the honeymoon suite once in a while? Maybe something with a Jacuzzi?”

“Where’s my brother?” Sam slurs out, vainly trying to banish the shadows at the edge of his vision that have grayed-out all the color in the room. He’s got a pounding headache that’s radiating from somewhere on the back of his skull, and if his hands weren’t tied behind the chair’s back, he’d be trying to rub circles into his temples.

“Oh, don’t you worry about him none,” the demon answers, and there’s a dangerous smile that stretches across his mushroom-colored mouth; lips cracking like new leather being bent. “They’ve carved him into a whole new animal. Ain’t nothing left of your brother worth saving.”

“Fuck you,” Sam mutters, tongue still thick in his mouth. After a few sets of blinks, colors start seeping into his vision again. Red sets in first, bright and thick in the blood splatters across Ronan’s face and the light trickle leaking from the hole busted in his forehead.

The muted light from the psychic’s lamps dances off the black gleam of the creature’s eyes, and he hops off his perch on the edge of the table. “Ooh, I got _bitchy_ Sam this time,” the demon says gleefully, striding across the room until he’s right in front of Sam. The toothy smile on his face is alligator-wide. “You’re much more fun to play with. Go ahead, Sammy, tell me about my _daddy issues_. Tell me how much better—smarter— _stronger_ you are than me. Remind me how much of an asshole I am and how much you hate me for pulling you back into the life that you never wanted.”

Sam stares at him mutely; jaw clenched tight and eyes narrowed into sharp slits.

“No? You gonna be sulky, emo Sam instead?” The demon looks genuinely disappointed but shrugs and pulls out a knife that looks ornate and old; probably something from the psychic’s personal collection. “I guess that means foreplay’s over. But first thing’s first: gotta get my brand on you; mark you up _special_. Now—” the demon leans in and winks “—this might tickle just a bit.”

Sam shifts uneasily, breath coming faster as the demon starts slicing his shirt right off, strip-by-strip, not even bothering to be careful with the sharp edge of the blade, and Sam can feel angry red welts rising like thin, silk threads across his chest and back. When there’s nothing left but a pile of shredded cotton material on the floor, the demon leans down, fingers playing with the edge of Sam’s jeans while Sam’s heart starts pounding triple-time against his chest. Smirking, the demon slides one hand up to feel that rushed tempo behind Sam’s ribs, tapping one finger in time with the beats and loudly humming the melody to what Sam recognizes as _Battery_ by Metallica.

The humming cuts off after a few minutes and his hand moves back down so he can shove Sam’s jeans down just far enough to reveal the expanse of Sam’s left hip, and when he _stops_ there, Sam lets out a lungful of some nameless fear he’d been holding onto. Folding his legs underneath him, the demon kneels down and holds onto Sam’s thigh so he can get enough leverage to start cutting into Sam’s skin with careful, precise strokes that burn like a motherfucker and have Sam sucking back air through his teeth.

“No-no-no, just wait. _Wait_ ,” Sam starts babbling, grimacing as the demon digs deep beneath the surface, damn near scratching into the bone, and Sam can feel the blood dripping down his hip, staining his boxers and pants a dark, rich red that he knows from experience he’ll never be able to wash out.

“Begging already? C’mon Sammy, save those puppy-dog eyes for the good part,” the demon says without so much as a pause. While shoving the point of the knife in with particular force, he laughs a little and asks, “Hey, remember that game we used to play on long car rides? The one where we’d spell out words on each other’s backs with our fingers?”

Sam tries to hold back a moan when the knife touches a particularly sensitive bundle of nerves, but it comes out anyway, long and shaky and low, and the knife slows to draw out that sensation until Sam’s struggling against his restraints and trying to rock his hips away.

“You were really good, little nerd that you always were,” the demon continues conversationally, clamping his hands down tighter to keep Sam still, “but when you got old enough, I started pulling out the dirty words and then I always won ‘cause you absolutely _refused_ to say any of ‘em out loud.” He barks out a laugh and shakes his head in amusement. “Your ears would turn all pink and then you’d hide in a book for the rest of the trip. Remember that?”

Sam doesn’t answer; just clenches his eyes tighter and tries to focus on not throwing up. _This isn’t Dean, this isn’t Dean,_ he chants in his head, refusing to take the bait no matter what this bastard says. Dean hasn’t been down there long enough to turn, not according to anything they’ve ever heard. Their own father had been down in the pit for almost a year, and when he’d come up from the Devil’s Gate, he’d still been human. Dean’s only been down there just over three months, so this black-eyed bastard _cannot_ be Dean, although if he knows this much about his brother, there’s a decent chance he’s got some useful information as to his whereabouts.

“Can you guess what I’m spelling right now?” the demon teasingly asks. “Think it’ll make you blush?”

Ignoring the obvious goad, Sam figures he’s stalled enough and he grits out: “ _Where. Is. My. Brother_.”

The dark-eyed sonofabitch frowns and changes his grip on the hilt of the knife before he plunges it in— _violent, quick stab forward_ —at the end of the row of letters he’d created; tacked on like a final, cavernous period.

Sam throws his head back and screams at the searing pain in his side, tries to calm his breathing down before it leads into panic, and manages to cut off the noise in his throat as he takes deep, gulping breaths of air.

Black-veiled eyes flit up to meet Sam’s as the demon rocks back on his heels so he can straighten out his legs and lean right into Sam’s space, staring him down and letting Sam feel that brimstone-hot breath puff across his face.

“Your brother is right where he belongs, and he’s never coming back. Hell owns that sweet Winchester ass, and they’re not in the habit of giving up any of their toys.”

Sam tips his head back, red flashing behind his eyes as he blearily stares into the demon’s cold stare, and his stomach sinks as he realizes that he’s not getting any information out of this dark, angry Hell creature. It’s time to call it quits. So, taking a deep, unsteady breath and keeping his eyes firmly locked onto the demon’s, Sam squares his shoulders and very clearly enunciates: “ _Vade retro_.”

The black in the psychic’s eyes immediately evaporates as his eyes roll back and his body slumps to the floor; emptied of whatever presence had possessed it and leaving the psychic unconscious but alive. Although Sam had been squeamish about the ingredients of the spell, he’d been smart enough to read the entire script before letting the ceremony begin, and he’s grateful for that little bit of preemptive thinking on his part despite his stupidity about everything else.

He manages to get himself loose from the chair before the psychic wakes up, and he grabs a questionably-stained towel from the bathroom to press into his hip, praying not to catch some kind of third-world infection from the filthy cloth that’s quickly becoming soaked in blood.

After making sure that the guy still has a pulse, Sam grabs the amulet from around the psychic’s throat and figures there’s no reason to stick around. Ruby’s waiting for him back at the motel, and when he gets back there, he’s going to tell her that he’s done looking for Dean. For now at least. If he wants to kill Lilith—and eventually find a way to his brother—he needs to build up his strength, and Ruby’s proposition for doing just that is the best chance he’s got.

*&*

Of course, he never expected for Dean to come back, all on his own, to pop up on his doorstep one day with a wry grin and a “Heya, Sammy” and Sam’s already been through enough of this to know that it’s a trick; they’ve never been this lucky. But as he’s trying to plunge a knife into the demon/shapeshifter/revenant’s heart, Bobby’s grabbing him from behind and shouting out that it’s _really_ Dean, that he’s checked, and Sam finally, _finally_ believes.

Once he’s convinced that it’s his honest-to-God brother, Sam allows himself to relax—he hadn’t ever completely shaken off that worry in the back part of his mind the _thing_ he’d raised from Hell was really Dean, but his brother’s alive and _human_ and his green eyes are just as bright as ever, and that more than anything makes Sam want to sob with relief.

Of course the questions of _how_ and _why_ remain unanswered, and when Bobby suggests that they consult a psychic, Sam decides not to mention that he’d already seen one. Anyway, Pamela’s nothing at all like Ronan.

*&*

Sam wonders how long they can go before Dean finds out, but he’s careful, and it ends up being _months_ until a minor slip-up on a hunt reveals to Dean what Sam had been hoping to never explain.

After Dean burns the hair of the ghost that had been possessing the _mammoth-sized_ student sitting on top of Sam and—quite frankly—kicking his ass, the student slumps over, passed out and effectively pinning Sam to the ground. It takes Dean five whole minutes to finish laughing at his own _full cowgirl_ joke before he finally decides to roll the student off Sam’s body and allow Sam to breathe again.

But as Dean’s pushing the kid off, Sam’s shirt rides up high enough and his pants low enough that Dean gets a flash of Sam’s scarred hip—bright, puckered words still as easy to read as they day they were carved out—and Sam hears the quick intake of breath as he feels his brother trace the letters, softly mouthing the word that had been carved into Sam’s skin:

 _DEAN_.

His brother’s eyes connect with his and Sam can see the shock and fear and anger there. However, they still have a bus full of upset students and coaches to think of, so after some quick lies and clean-up duty (and a brief stop at the school), they eventually get back on the road.

Sam’s impressed with how long it takes Dean to break the silence—two full hours—before he yanks the car over to the side of the road and demands that Sam tell him why the _hell_ he has Dean’s name carved into his hip.

It takes a few minutes for Sam to get it out, but he finally admits to seeing a psychic and trying to summon Dean’s ghost from Hell. His brother doesn’t even wait for the whole explanation; just shoves the door open, gets out, and slams it shut, and when Sam opens his own door, he can hear Dean murmuring apologies to his baby for the rough treatment, and Sam feels some of the old jealousy start to resurface. He’s faintly surprised, however, to discover that his jealousy actually runs both ways—caught in some limbo-wormhole between both Dean and the car—and he realizes that at some point during the four months he and the Impala had shared together, that he’d grown a lot more attached to her than he’d thought.

His hand slides around the edge of the headlights as he joins Dean on the other side of the Impala, and Dean won’t look at him—is staring out into the darkening grass fields like he’s trying to decide the best place to bury a dead body—and Sam leans against the side of the car and waits patiently, knowing from experience that if he pushes Dean to talk before he’s ready, he’ll likely just get lies and defensive anger.

The quiet stretches on for a long time, and it’s making Sam nervous. He can’t read Dean when he’s like this. His brother’s tells only work on things like lying about drinking the last beer ( _there’s only_ two _of us in this motel Dean, and the salt lines haven’t been broken so_ no _, I don’t think it was a demon_ ), or blowing Sam off in a bar to hook up with a chick, or trying to trick Sam into doing the laundry by himself because Dean’s “too hung over” (subtext: _too lazy_ ) to figure out how to do something complicated like separate colors from whites.

Sam carefully bumps his shoulder against Dean’s, trying to test the extent of Dean’s anger and feeling relieved when his brother doesn’t flinch away but instead leans right back into Sam, and he can feel Dean take in a deep breath, his shoulders rising against Sam’s, before his brother speaks.

“It was real.”

There’s a short, pregnant pause, before Sam asks, “What was?”

“That demon,” Dean says, turning to face Sam, his jaw set firmly in what Sam recognizes as his brother trying his best to keep it together. “That was me, after I said ‘yes’ to Alastair and started cutting up those poor bastards down in Hell. The sons of bitches would send me souls all trussed up to look like you—sometimes other people I knew, but mostly you—and it got so it didn’t even bother me after a while. I knew it wasn’t really you. I remember that time, though. It felt different. But they were always trying to find new ways to crack my gourd, and I’d just figured that was Alastair being inventive. But it was real. It was me. That— _I did that to you_.”

“You didn’t know,” Sam replies, because it’s the truth. “And you weren’t exactly in your right mind.”

“But I knew it was _somebody_ ,” Dean asserts, voice low and self-loathing. “I lost count of how many people I had under my knife, but they were all exactly like that. I didn’t care who I was hurting. I marked them up, cut them up, bled them out, and I _liked_ it. Sam, I was a monster.”

And Sam nods because Dean’s told him this before, but Sam knows better than to hold Dean responsible for _anything_ he did in Hell. “I knew what I was getting into when I tried to contact Hell,” Sam tells him. “I knew the risks, and I knew I might pull up something from down there that I wouldn’t like. And it’s not like this is the first scar I’ve ever gotten from doing something stupid. So you can beat yourself up about it or you can go buy me some Mederma gel and we can move on. But I don’t blame you, Dean.”

“Well you _should_ ,” Dean angrily shoots back. “Sam, you’ve got myfuckin’ _name_ on your hip. At the very least, you can’t tell me that doesn’t make hook-ups a little awkward.”

Snorting, Sam figures he should’ve guessed that would be the first place his brother’s mind would go. “In case you haven’t noticed,” he replies, mouth quirking, “I haven’t really had to worry about that for a while. Besides, I’ve got about a trillion more scars, so if she can handle the claw marks across my back and the bite-marks on my shoulder, I think she can handle four letters on my hip. Anyway,” Sam adds, the corners of his mouth rising even further, “maybe I’ll just tell her I have a thing for the King of Cool.”

“Steve McQueen?” Dean postulates with a confused crease of his forehead.

Rolling his eyes, Sam corrects him with a scathing, “ _No,_ idiot. The other one. Dean Martin.”

Dean’s lips twitch in a small smile, although it disappears when he looks down at where Sam’s scar is hidden beneath denim and plaid. “Well, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” Dean says, reaching out to rest his hand against Sam’s scarred hip for just a moment, touching lightly like he’s worried that it still hurts. But his expression softens into a wry grin again as he adds, “And if you want, I’m willing to let you mark up this baby-smooth body in kind. Eye for an eye, brother; it’s only fair.”

“You mean… you want _my_ name on _your_ hip?” Sam asks, eyeing his brother dubiously.

“If it’ll make you feel better,” Dean offers, eyebrow raised high as if in a dare. He pulls his switch blade from his pocket and makes a show of unlatching the blade, flipping it in his hand, and offering the handle to Sam.

Sam can’t help but roll his eyes, and although he wonders what his brother would do if Sam said ‘yes’ (especially when they both know Sam would never mean it), he answers, “Yeah, no, I think I’ll pass,” and Dean shrugs, puts away the knife, and turns to get inside the car.

They make a quick stop at a gas station where Dean goes inside to grab some snacks while Sam fills up the car. When Dean comes out, he throws a bottle of Mederma gel at Sam’s head, and Sam’s gotten used to flying projectiles aimed at his face so he catches it easily. He laughs when he sees what it is and Dean gives him a half-grin as he makes some remark about how this means he really owns Sam’s ass now, and naturally Sam narrows his eyes and offers to test that theory right now by having a throwdown in the middle of the parking lot. Dean just smirks and tells him _maybe next time._

When they’re back on the road, Sam can’t help but think back to the question his former English teacher had asked him before they’d left town—“Are you happy?”—and he swallows back and thinks, _honestly? No._ His life is too fucked up right now to even think about things like _happiness_ , and Sam’s not sure he’s completely gotten over his brother’s death (the fact that Dean’s sitting right next to him notwithstanding).

But as Sam glances over at his brother, taking in the amulet around his neck and the steering wheel under his hands that are tapping in time with the classic rock mix tape blasting through the speakers, some tightly-cranked gear finally relaxes in his chest at the sight of things being right where they belong. And while Sam knows he’s still a long ways away from happiness, he figures that, in the meantime, riding shotgun with his brother is about as close as he can get.


End file.
